Star Trek

Okay, so in a deleted scene, Odan says that Trill hosts normally have no personality, but Riker is having subconscious influence on him.

Really really should have made a new species with a similar concept.

Worf's second discommendation did feel rather redundant, even though it was for real this time. His relationship with Martok, on the other hand, was exceptional, Martok himself was just awesome. Ron Moore even said he was grateful for the chance to fix the "Klingon's are misogynists" error by making it so the women were in charge of the Houses, while the men were in charge of the council.

And this is the lesson Sf Debris has for new writers:

Yes, Gene Roddenberry and his staff did have good ideas, but good ideas are the start of a story. It's the execution that makes or breaks the story.

The Trills are a good idea that really flourished on DS9 that for TNG was just the Species Of The Week.

And the flaws you guys pointed out are what happens when the idea isn't thought through.

If this is Up To Eleven, we get things like the last two TNG movies....

TNG fleshed out TOS's Klingons and the Romulans, Deep Space Nine fleshed out TNG's Ferengi and Trill (the Cardassians and Bajorans don't count because they were invented for DS 9 and introduced on TNG to set them up), as well as doing more with the Maquis than Voyager ever did.

I understand that Enterprise did a lot of work with the Andorians too.

Andorians needed some development but Enterprise dropped the ball on so many balls Trek related. Like Voyager, B&B tried to do TNG-era tales with the wrong era.

Star Trek seems to have a consistent problem with introducing "evil enemy races" that are two-dimensional to the point of crossing over into uninteresting, forcing the later series to flesh them out. Not that that's a unique problem to the Science Fiction genre (or the Fantasy genre either), but since Star Trek touts itself as being philosophical and focusing on how varied and worthwhile differing cultures and ideals and such are it's noticeably dissonant.

Even with the amount of worldbuilding DS 9 gave them, the Ferengi suck. Quark's family constitutes the only Ferengi worth paying attention to in my opinion, and Quark himself is imo the way the Ferengi in general should have been done - unlike the rest of them, he has a lot more reason and intelligence to his philosophy rather than just being "eeeeeevil businessmen for the hell of it" like every other Ferengi (and even so, Nog and Rom's plot is all about how Ferengi culture stinks).

The Borg, at least, revel in their lack of depth - their lack of depth is kind of the point, even. So they're alright. But I greatly dislike the Dominion because they're just a mismatch of every "evil conquering army" trope in the book thrown together: the rulers are all racist, despotic dictators, the bureaucracy is an entire race of manipulative, self-serving connivers, and the army is an entire race of ruthlessly efficient mindless stormtroopers. Despite both being absolutely loyal to the Founders, the Vorta and Jem-Hadar are so disfunctional that - like the Ferengi - it's difficult to imagine the Dominion's hierarchy not self-destructing ages ago, let alone being a major player in the universe.

I do happen to like the Cardassians though, since for all their hat of "needlessly slimy and conniving imperialists," there's a bit more nuance (and for a lack of a better word, "humanity") to them than Star Trek typically gives. Imo, the Cardassians fit the intended idea of "what humanity could be like if we don't improve" far better than any of the other races made to do it - they're a much better dark reflection of our own traits.

edited 3rd Aug '15 9:32:39 AM by KnownUnknown

The latest episode of Trek.FM's TNG podcast is reviewing "These are the Voyages", so I pulled up the only Star Trek series not in my Netflix list so I could watch it.

The show notes for the discussion specifically mentioned the reproduction sets, and so far the Holodeck and Ten-Forward are very good, but the corridor is significantly off and the turbolift off it is nothing like TNG's turbolifts (probably a redress of the NX-01's set).

What's really on display is the difference in camerawork styles across ten years. Even aside from swooping around the D because it's a CGI model and they can now, they're much more casual with close-ups and camera moves.

And Riker does not cut the same line in his uniform he did on TNG. But I buy him better when in the Enterprise flight suits or Chef's coat. Marina Sirtis pointed out in an interview that on TNG they never felt the need to line her costume with asset enhancements like they do here.

The Pegasus◊

These are the Voyages..◊

God I loved Captain Picard Day.

It was the only moment I could find in the episode where Troi and Riker are actually on screen at the same time and close enough you can see how they looked.

Memory Alpha notes that Troi's uniform is greener in Enterprise than in TNG, but it doesn't so much look green as it looks like the faded shade of blue the blue shirts seemed to have before the remaster showed us the proper color.

It certainly doesn't look as green as the Deep Space Nine/Voyager "blue" shirts.

No, hang on... there's an extra in a properly blue uniform in the background of that corridor shot!

edited 5th Aug '15 2:33:23 PM by TParadox

Ouch.

"Don't think of it as Spanx, Marina. Visualize it as...the quantum...tachyon...whatever."

edited 8th Aug '15 2:53:48 PM by johnnyfog

I seem to recall her talking about how when she saw that the costume they gave her had a padded bust, she took it to show Frakes so they could laugh at it together.

So when Worf challenged the accusation against his father, they took his sash away because his dishonor makes him unworthy to wear it. He was wearing it again in the next episode like nothing happened, even though he otherwise takes that Discommendation very seriously. He shouldn't have put it back on until his family name was restored.

At the time the sash was so much a part of Worf's character that the cast and production team had to keep it. It's even on his action figure.

In universe, I think it's an act of defiance. Worf's father wasn't the traitor, the real traitor's family was just to powerful to take down. So Worf wore his sash because someday his family's honor would be restored.

Kind of like Genie's cuffs from Aladdin, where it literally is a sign of his imprisonment but he looks weird without it.

At least Worf's baldric is every bit as much about his family heritage as it is about Klingon politics.

On an entirely different subject, I did a really silly thing.

Green's a great color! And Q was being weird that day. But I love your work. I saw Planet of the Apes, Half Life 2, and Q being so narcissistic that he has a naked version of himself following him wherever he goes.

Also Serenity landing (probably the least ominous background), San Francisco in ruins after a Dominion attack, and flying Daleks blowing up a Hooverville.

I KNEW that ship looked familiar. And now that you mentioned the others, I understand them. I think DS 9 became my new favorite after season four kicked us into high gear. I liked the other three seasons too, but they were mostly one-off episodes.

edited 9th Aug '15 4:44:55 PM by Journeyman

One more way Enterprise is stealth Star Trek: On my recent Netflix history right now, I have

• "Star Trek: DS9: Ssn 4: The Sword of Kahless"
• "Star Trek: Ssn 3: Whom Gods Destroy"
• "These Are The Voyages..."

Something's missing on the last one.

Our Man Bashir, double entendre names I didn't get before:

• Mona Luvsitt (how did I miss this?)
• Anastasia Komananov (well, if you squint...)

So why was Anastasia the only character whose accent overrode the crew's accents? Falcon may have had an Irish accent before the accident (though probably didn't), but Duchamps should probably have a French accent.

Not sure if the world would not explode to hear Worf in terrible faux-French accent.

Patrick Stewart recently said that somewhere deep in Paramount's secret archives, there's a test track of him playing Picard with a French accent. I guess I have to agree that Spess, ze fi-Nal frontir doesn't have the same gravitas.

I'm sure there are plenty of French people who can do an English accent, and if Picard's original accent was strong enough, he'd probably have learned a British one to be understood better. Assuming he could get rid of the strong French one enough to be understandable.